Community collaboration fuels research into African-American history in Perkiomen Valley

Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center Research Associate Emma Hartman’s ongoing investigation into the lives of African-Americans in the Perkiomen Valley during the 1700s and early 1800s is revealing new historical insights — and sparking collaboration. 

Following a recent Brown Bag Lunch Lecture hosted by the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center and the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Hartman received an outpouring of interest, including valuable genealogical information and source material from community members, according to a recent email newsletter. 

These conversations have helped uncover new leads and highlighted the importance of community input in piecing together untold stories, such as those of individuals enslaved by early local families, Hartman said. 

    

Hartman emphasized that history research thrives on shared curiosity, collaboration, and open dialogue, and that public engagement continues to shape and strengthen her work.

 Hartman shared some new twists and turns in a newsletter:

What happens when researchers share their work? They give a talk or write an article and then what? Is the work done? Does it just exist passively in the world for others to consume? Not quite. Research is always an ongoing process and is done best when it is a collaborative one as well.

After sharing my work at the Brown Bag Lunch Lecture earlier this month, I was pleasantly surprised by not only the number of thoughtful questions and thank yous from those who attended the talk but the ways in which responses to the talk have shaped my work since.

Sally Francis, the 6th great-granddaughter of Adam Hillegas, reached out to me asking for one of my sources concerning Adam’s enslavement of a man named Parris. At the same time, she also shared a number of sources from her own genealogical research. While Sally and I have perhaps uncovered more mysteries than we have solved together, I am hopeful that with both of us searching we will be able to track down more information and tell a more complete version of Parris’ story.

Melissa Schwenk Weinstein, another genealogist, generously shared information not only about her own family, the Schwenks, but helped me locate the original will of Henry Krouss, in which he provided for the care for and eventual freedom of his indentured children of color. While I had seen transcriptions of Krouss’ will, it was Melissa who pointed out that the original was found with a box of Schwenk family papers at the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville.

Both of these women have been quite useful in the research process not only for the sources they have so generously shared with me but in the thoughtful conversations I have had with them about my research and the methods behind it. Sally and I were discussing a story that has been passed down about an enslaved woman named Hannah and her attempts to poison her enslaver. Neither Sally nor I have been able to find a primary source that either corroborates or disproves particular details from the story, but Sally described a sense of something being “off” about the story that really resonated with me. While sharing that same hunch certainly cannot be used to declare the story to be either fact or fiction, it has prompted us to look further into the story which may have otherwise been taken at face value. Sharing ideas or suggestions for further inquiry is just as important as sharing facts and sources.

Oftentimes my conversations with other researchers or interested community members can feel serendipitous. Perhaps we are looking into the same family at the same time, or when I feel as though I’ve hit a wall in my research, somebody shares a personal research breakthrough that helps with my own thinking. That sense of serendipity is only possible because we have laid the groundwork and built the connections upon a shared research interest and awareness of the other's work. The informal conversations I have had with interested community members and genealogists have often been just as fruitful as those I have had with professional historians working in the same field. I hope that as I continue to share findings from this research it will continue to reach new audiences and form community connections. Research cannot exist in a vacuum and is never truly “done.” We can only help to tell a more complete and accurate story of our history and, in order to do so, we must do it together.

Thanks to the Philadelphia Funder Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial for funding this necessary work.